A failed Florida charter school’s principal is getting a $519,000 departure payment, and that has some state lawmakers outraged.
An evaluation by the Orange County school district shows NorthStar High School’s directors paid Principal Kelly Young more than twice as much as they spent on teachers and students in the 2011-12 school year.
The Orlando Sentinel reports that Ms. Young received $824,000 in taxpayer funds. The school spent $366,042 on instruction, including teacher salaries last year.
In 2010-11, her contract also called for $305,000 in pay, a third of the school’s budget that year.
State Sen. Bill Montford, a Democrat, says he’s drafting legislation to make charter schools more accountable and transparent.
The school, housed inside concrete portables, lacked computers, a library, or a cafeteria for some 180 mostly underprivileged students.
The district report said nearly three-quarters of the students failed the state’s reading test and half failed mathematics.
